By Devinder Sharma
While the Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is in a quandary over the mounting foodgrain surplus, the American President Bill Clinton has hit upon a wonderful "save the hungry" idea. During the recent G-8 meeting at Okinawa in Japan, Clinton announced that the United States would launch a $300 million global school lunch pilot project. The program will start with a school lunch and breakfast feeding program for 9 million children in selected developing countries, mainly in Africa.
America too is faced with a problem of plenty. But unlike India, the US surplus is because the world has increasingly refused to buy the genetically engineered soya, corn and wheat. And what better way to get rid of the burgeoning stocks than to distribute it as a humanitarian aid !
In India, however, it is a strange paradox. At a time when more than 320 million people go to bed hungry every night, the BJP-led coalition is in a dilemma over the burgeoning foodgrain stocks. With the grain silos overflowing, the country's food buffer has swelled to a peak of 44 million tonnes, including 22 million tonnes for the public distribution system. Unable to find an export market, the government has instead decided to make available the surplus grain to the private trade, and that too at a subsidised price.
No other democracy in the world would have survived this incongruity of the plentiful grain stocks on the one hand and a massive population of hungry and poor on the other. Even in the United States, the role model for the neo-liberalised economy, foodgrains are only allowed to be exported after meeting the food requirement of every individual and animal. The US Department of Agriculture, for instance, spends about US $ 50 billion to feed its approximately 36 million people below the poverty line. And at no stage in its independent history, has the US left the monumental task of feeding its poor to the market forces !
India too is publicly committed to feed its hungry millions. Time and again it has reiterated the commitment to remove hunger. It was in 1974 that the first World Food Conference in Rome had reaffirmed, "every man, woman and child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition in order to develop fully and maintain their physical and mental faculties." That food for all should be a right for all humanity was repeatedly reiterated in 1983, 1984 and in March 1992 through the Barcelona Declaration which called for respect for mankind's right to food. At the World Food Summit in 1996, food for all was once again the overwhelming conclusion. Ironically, India has been in the forefront in signing all these global declarations.
But when it comes to turning the noble deed into action, successive governments have developed cold feet. The question of widening fiscal deficit invariably crops in. For instance, this year's food subsidy bill, budgeted for Rs 8,100 crore, is sure to cross Rs 10,000 crore. The country may, in fact, be required to spend Rs 15,000 crore to keep the additional quantity of surplus food stocks. Free trade apologists therefore have already begun to call for dismantling the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and letting the market forces operate. Private trade alone can reduce the resulting fiscal deficit, many World Bank-trained economists plead. After all, how can a country like India, ranked 128th in the Human Development Index by the UNDP, afford to incur such heavy expenses on procuring, storing and distributing foodgrains?
None of the macro-economists had batted an eyelid when former Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral had doled out an annual burden of more than Rs 80,000-crore by way of implementation of the ninth pay commission report. That too to a highly incompetent work force. Surprisingly, the question of widening of the fiscal deficit was never raised. And more recently, the non-performing assets of the nationalised banks has shot up to Rs 53,000 crore. A few of the corporate houses and political bigwigs have milked the state exchequer dry. Do you hear any of any urgent measures to recover the whopping amount? And what about the fiscal deficit?
In any case, India's food (mis)management is leading to the emergence of an acutely ravenous and malnourished society. With an average daily foodgrain consumption of less than 500 grams, the nation is thrilled at the steady increase in calorie intake, even if it is at a snail's pace. In neighbouring China, it is six times more, hovering around three kilograms. With a population of only about 200 million more than India, China produces more than twice the quantity of foodgrains and still prefers to import foodgrains year after year to adequately feed its massive population.
With a third of the world's hungry and chronically malnourished languishing in India, the resulting impact on human development and economic growth will always remain dismal. The absolute number of the severely malnourished is in fact more than the country's population on the eve of independence. Such is the economic deprivation that an estimated two million children die every year from diseases related to malnutrition. And yet, with the foodgrain silos bursting at the seams, the poor have no access to the basic human right - food.
A beginning has to be made to feed the hungry millions, the sooner the better. If only surplus food can be used in such an imaginative way so that it acts as an incentive for rural growth and development, the nation can make an attempt to wipe out the guilt and humiliation that comes with sustainable poverty and growing hunger. The struggle against hunger and poverty will have to be fought and controlled by people and communities. The lack of requisite political will alone is coming in the way of ensuring humane levels of food security for all. The BJP-led coalition can show the politically-correct path by making the surplus food available for the poor and hungry. It only requires political Statesmanship.
(Devinder Sharma is president of the New Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology & Food Security)
From: The Hindu Business Line, New Delhi/Mumbai/Chennai/Bangalore; Sept 11, 2000:
